The Pennsylvania State University invites applications and nominations for the inaugural Director of the Penn State Critical Materials Alliance (Penn State CMA), a strategic university-wide initiative focused on advancing research, workforce development, industry engagement, and innovation across the critical minerals and materials value chain. Penn State possesses the breadth required to address the entire critical minerals and materials lifecycle - the new Director will be instrumental in aggregating and focusing expertise across campus. 

The Penn State CMA is a university-wide initiative managed by the Materials Research Institute (MRI) on behalf of Penn State's Office of the Senior Vice President for Research. The Alliance brings together faculty and research infrastructure from across the University, including the Colleges of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Engineering, Eberly College of Science, Smeal College of Business, and Information Sciences and Technology, together with Penn State's Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) and major interdisciplinary institutes including the Institute of Energy and the Environment (IEE), National Security Institute (NSI), and Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS). 

The Director will provide visionary leadership for a growing interdisciplinary effort spanning resource discovery and characterization, extraction and separation, advanced materials processing and manufacturing, circular economy approaches, artificial intelligence and supply-chain analytics, and the societal dimensions of critical minerals and materials development. The successful candidate will hold a tenured faculty appointment at the Professor rank in an academic department aligned with their expertise and will work closely with colleges, interdisciplinary institutes, and research centers across the University.